A Mishmash of Madness
by wbyeets
Summary: Shortly after the events of the Red Wedding, King Joffrey chances across a magical mushroom that changes his mind about EVERYthing. Unfortunately, the consequences for the realm are typically dire.
1. 1: Tyrion

**TYRION**

* * *

"Winter has truly come for House Stark," Bronn said with a dark smile as he swirled the wine in his cup. Tyrion and the sellsword knight were brooding together in Tyrion's apartments while Sansa, frozen mask of duty and courtesy that she had become, sat motionless in the Godswood, sending who-knew-what prayers to who-knew-what gods.

"Indeed," Tyrion grumbled.

"Lady Catelyn and the Young Wolf murdered at the Twins, his host shattered, his hopes extinguished," Bronn went on, smiling. "I shall never marry, dwarf. Marriage is a sour draught for men like us."

Tyrion laughed.

"How is your lady wife?"

Tyrion grunted.

"And how is her maidenhood?"

Tyrion's mismatched eyes found Bronn's and glared. The sellsword laughed. "Here, dwarf," he said, reaching into his doublet and pulling out a small leather pouch bound with twine.

"What's this?" Tyrion caught the pouch one-handed and tried to feel what was within.

"The maegi across the narrow sea call this the Spoor of Madness," Bronn explained as Tyrion carefully drew a shriveled brown thing out of the tiny pouch. He held it up to the light and examined it.

"They're only a type of mushroom, but if you eat one, you can become a god. I stole them from Grand Maester Pycelle's quarters."

"What in seven hells are you talking about?"

"It's a drug."

"Like wine."

"_No,_" Bronn said with another mysterious smile. "_Not_ like wine. Give them to your lady wife. Might be that she could use a vacation to the most distant reaches of the multiverse."

"Sansa," Tyrion said happily about two hours later when the girl reentered their apartments. He was seated on the edge of her bed, sweating violently, his wiry mess of a gold-and-black beard standing off from his face like it was trying to break loose. Sansa shrunk against the door.

"Yes, my lord?"

"Sansa, Sansa, Sawnzaaaa, Swaahhhnzwaaaaah," Tyrion drawled, laughing.

"My lord?"

Tyrion sprung up from the bed. "I am nine feet tall!" he screamed. "I am finally taller than Jaime!"

Sansa looked down upon her tiny husband. "Yes."

"You're a beautiful color right now."

"Thank you."

"A beautiful shade of color."

"Thank you, my lord. It's very kind of you to say so."

"It's awful about your mother and Robb," Tyrion said, suddenly becoming grave. "But I've just spoken with them both. Their message for you is this, Sansa: turn on, tune in, and drop out."

"Pardon me, my lord?"

"You know, I'm really no Lannister," Tyrion suddenly decided. "And you, no Stark. Winter has come for House Stark. Let's start a new house, Sansa, just you and me. House Madness. Our sigil will be a screaming demon's skull belching a rainbow on a field of multidimensional green. Pandimensional green, maybe. I'll have to see what Bronn can cook up. Can Bronn draw?"

"Bronn, my lord?" Sansa had met Tyrion's sellsword knight a handful of times but he had never impressed her as much of an artist. Or even a literate.

"Nevermind, I'll draw it myself. House Madness! Sansa Madness and Tyrion Madness. It has an excellent ring to it. Ring, ring, ring. Do my shoes look all right?"

"They look good," Sansa said.

"Have a mushroom," Tyrion said, flinging the little pouch at his wife. It hit her in the breast and fell to the ground.

"If it please my lord I may try one later," Sansa told Tyrion. She recovered the pouch and lay it gently on her writing desk. "I just ate the most filling grape yesterday."

"The mushrooms are for you, my lady," Tyrion said. "I couldn't believe it about Robb and your mother. That was some serious shit, I bet."

"Well," Sansa said, fidgeting, "Robb wasn't that great, my lord. We never really hung out all that much or anything."

"Suit yourself," Tyrion said. He suddenly felt on the verge of tears. "I have a lot of good things to go look at right now anyway. All kinds of weird things to see. Things you'd never believe, Sansa. There are colors in the sky today that would turn you into a cat, if they could." His mismatched eyes gazed sorrowfully into Sansa's soul. "Maybe they already have." He wandered out.

A bland and hopeless expression of apathy settled over Sansa's lovely features for the nine-thousandth time since she had been brought to King's Landing. She stood completely still for six minutes and forty-one seconds, and then turned and left the room.

An hour later King Joffrey came tromping up the stairs to Tyrion's apartments looking for Sansa. He had recently devised a way to load a crossbow with a blood sausage and have it actually fire, and his royal blond curls had shivered with anticipation at trying it out on his favorite punching bag. But Sansa was not there.

"Sansa?" Joffrey bellowed manishly. There was no echo in the cramped halls of Tyrion's apartments. "That bitch," Joffrey said under his breath. He lowered the sausage crossbow and began to move through the darkened apartments.

It wasn't long before he got to rummaging through the cabinets and drawers. While he found no fresh evidence of treason, he did discover a small leather pouch tied with twine containing a number of twisted brown things.

"The slut hoards mushrooms from my own table," King Joffrey marveled. Fury swept over him, a red battle standard that muted pain and amplified pleasure. The nerve of her! Joffrey laughed and emptied the entire contents of the pouch into his royal mouth. Let the bitch find it empty when she went scurrying for her midnight snack.


	2. 2: Catelyn

**CATELYN**

* * *

She was wandering along the edge of a serene brook, weaving her footsteps in and out, smiling and shining. It was near sunset. The towers of Riverrun could be seen distantly through a soft summer haze that rendered them in purplish impressionistic hues, and over the grassy field between her and the keep swam an ocean of fireflies.

_I am dead, I think._

But it wasn't a frightened sort of thought. It was resigned. Perhaps she would even find Robb. Bran, Rickon, Ned, her father—all the ones she'd lost.

"Catelyn!"

Her heart ballooned at the familiar sound of her husband's voice. She broke into a trot. When she reached Ned she threw her arms around him and went in for a kiss, but he pulled away. Something was wrong.

"Ned?"

"It's me, Catelyn."

"What is it?"

"Um…"

Eddard Stark, slain lord of Winterfell, turned his face toward the setting sun. For a moment red and gold light painted him in the colors of House Lannister. Catelyn frowned.

"Tell me," she insisted.

"It's Jinglebell," Ned said at last.

"What?"

"You killed that retarded guy, Catelyn."

Walder Frey crouching like a twisted gremlin in his enormous oak throne, the pagan _boom, boom, boom, boom_ of the drum, the crossbow bolts, the screams—she clutched her chest and staggered, but Ned caught her.

"They betrayed us—"

"But Catelyn, eww!" Ned cried. "You almost sawed his head off! It's not like he did anything wrong. In fact, out of all the Freys, it's possible he's the only one who didn't do _anything _wrong at _all_."

"They murdered our son!" Catelyn shouted. "Our king! Walder Frey killed _Robb_!"

Ned shook his head and mugged regretfully. "He wasn't even a point-of-view character though," he said.

"What on earth are you talking about?!"

"I'm talking about you killing a retarded guy for no reason!" Ned shouted back. "Listen, I could put up with all the abuse you gave Jon Snow. I know he always reminded you of my side-ho. But look: I just can't get past you vengefully ripping that knife back and forth across Jinglebell's throat. I'm sorry, Catelyn. We're getting a… _ghost divorce._"

Catelyn sank to the ground and wept. For a while Eddard stood there, his long shadow lying across her shuddering form like a cloak. Then he turned and walked off, leaving her to her tears and her afterlife.


	3. 3: Cersei

**CERSEI**

* * *

The howls of sorrow coming from the Great Hall where weeping King Joffrey sat the Iron Throne could be heard throughout the Red Keep. He was bowed forward as if seated upon a toilet, with his head in his hands and his curls shaking with each sob. Cersei and Lord Tywin looked on with the other guests Joffrey had demanded attend him. The brothers of the Kingsguard stood quietly in a pair of clumps, and behind them were a collection of the Keep's maesters and smiths. For some reason Joffrey had even summoned a number of whores from the city's various brothels, and these women drifted awkwardly through the nobles and men at arms, clearly unsure which of their services had been needed, and for whom.

"I'm just so _fucking sorry_," Joffrey howled, lifting his head briefly, making terrible eye contact with a few people, and then lowering it back into his hands for another round of sobs.

"It's… all right, Your Grace," Ser Loras Tyrell mumbled. "There there."

"It's not all right at _all!_" Joffrey screamed. "Where is Sansa? I have so many apologies to make. Oh gods, what have I done? Why am I _like _this?!"

"We must give him dreamwine," Lord Tywin said quietly from the side of his mouth to Cersei. "Or a beating. Anything to quiet him down before he says something irrevocable."

"Bring me the gold cloaks," Joffrey roared. "Their service is at an end. Having weapons is _wrong._ There's no reason to keep these sharp things. This is all so fucked up. Everything we've built, all the trickery and lies, _everything_!"

"What will the gold cloaks do now, Your Grace?" asked Grand Maester Pycelle. "If they are no longer to guard."

Joffrey looked up in awe. The question had clearly blown his mind. "They will begin a new work," he decreed, climbing to his feet and beginning to hop up and down on the seat of the Iron Throne. "They shall be organized into Sorriness Brigades. A Sorriness Brigade shall be dispatched to each of the great houses of Westeros. To tell them how sorry I am."

Cersei and Tywin exchanged a look.

"Sorry for what, Your Grace?" Pycelle asked.

"For being such a stupid little shit," Joffrey admitted, then collapsed back into his sobs.

"He's lost his wits," Cersei whispered in horror.

"No, the stupid little shit is only high," Lord Tywin sighed. "He must have eaten the Spoor of Madness. I know of no other substance that can turn a man into such a blithering dunce. But who gave it to him?"

"Any man who won't accept my apology shall have his eyes pulled out and fed to him," Joffrey screamed. Then it dawned on him what he had said, and he screamed again, in mortal terror.

"The Imp," Cersei growled. "He has always hated Joffrey."

"At least we have all these new colors, though," Joffrey cried out in ecstasy. "Oh, thank goodness."

Cersei stalked off to commission a tiny crow's cage that would be suitable for dangling Tyrion from the walls of the Red Keep.


	4. 4: Arya

**ARYA**

* * *

It had been days since they'd encountered anyone else on the road. Arya rode in a kind of sullen trance that was well matched to the weather; unrelenting soggy grayness that muffled the sun and left the night without stars. The Hound spoke little, and she even less.

He'd had to smash her with the flat of his axe to get her away from the Twins, squirmy and unpredictable little thing that she was. Arya tried to escape every now and then, but never with very much gusto. It was plain to see there was nowhere for either of them to go.

"You complete butt wrinkle," Arya complained loudly one morning when the Hound flung his dagger at a squirrel and missed.

"Shut up, bitch."

"It's a free country. I'll say what I want."

"It's not a free country at all," the Hound muttered.

"Tonight. When you go to sleep?"

He looked blankly up at her. "Yeah?"

"I'm gonna shove Needle all the way up your peehole."

The Hound's hands instinctively went to guard his privates. "You shut up!" he cried. "Stop saying things like that!"

"I'll put bugs in your eyes," Arya said vengefully.

"Why do you hate me so much," the Hound wailed, lurching to his feet and going off to look for the knife.

She waited until he was out of sight and said under her breath, "Because you're a nasty butt wrinkle."

Arya was restless. Her whole family was dead, except Jon Snow, who'd taken the black, which included an awkward vow of celibacy. It seemed unlikely she'd see him again. The Hound was her family now, and she hated the Hound.

"Go start a fire," the Hound said when he returned. He had found the knife, but one of his hands was squirting blood.

"What did you do," Arya said scornfully.

"Nothing. I'm fine. I picked it up by the wrong part. Don't look at me. Go start a goddamn fire, She-wolf. Need to boil some wine."

Arya belched. "I drank all the wine."

The Hound looked at her. "Then I guess we're boiling river mud."

"That won't sanitize your wound."

"Sanitize?" Sandor looked lost.

"That means clean, you dumbass. Wine sanitizes because it has alcohol in it. Alcohol kills germs."

"Keep spewing that witchy horse shit and I'll pull your legs off."

"I'll bite your balls," Arya snapped.

He sprang furiously to his feet. "_Stop _it!" he shrieked.

"I'll geld you with a wooden mixing spoon," Arya informed him, rolling and dodging as Sandor lunged for her. She picked up Needle and got into the water dancer's stance that Syrio had taught her in King's Landing. "I'll give you rabies."

"Shut the fuck _UP_!" he roared, drawing his double-handed longsword and swinging a furious upward cut aimed at Arya's jaw. His blade went high, and Arya sprang in to karate chop his dick. But her aim was off too, and her attack glanced off his thigh.

"Little Stark bitch," the Hound panted as he stepped back and back, loosing wild, swooping cuts, trying everything to keep Arya at bay. Her Needle shrieked off his plate again and again, and finally she scored a shallow cut across the back of the hand he had injured before, while he'd been recovering his throwing knife. The Hound screamed in fatal agony and threw himself onto his back, letting his sword cartwheel out of his hands and clatter uselessly to the ground. He writhed, hooting and kicking in the dust, snot boiling from his nostrils and his teeth on the burned side bared in an inhuman snarl.

"_Muh-MUH-MUH-MY HAAAAND,_" the Hound whisper-screamed.

"Dumb little baby. If you don't get up I'll pee on your armor."

The Hound screamed soundlessly, twisting about in the dirt as if he were on fire.

Arya began to unlace her jerkin.

"NO!" Sandor screamed. He began crawling frantically away. "PLEASE!"

Suddenly Arya stopped. "Be quiet," she said, and the Hound fell silent at once. They both opened their mouths to hear better were as still as death among the trees.

"Riders," Sandor said. His hand was one hundred percent healed. He got to his feet, sheathed his longsword, and tossed Arya a bag of their supplies. "Get the horses. And our weapons."

Arya stared at him with huge eyes and said nothing. Then she turned and vanished into the woods, back toward where they'd camped.

They tried until nightfall to outdistance their pursuers, but it was just no use. The men came on healthy, well-fed destriers and chargers that were accoutered for war. They carried a banner that Sandor was able to glimpse once from the top of a hill, when they were still nearly half a mile back—a field of red and gold checks, Lannister colors, with a device that looked like a crown with smoke rising from it.

"Who?" Arya said when Sandor seemed to be finished deciding who they were.

"No clue," he said gruffly. "Shut up. Doesn't matter who they are. If they catch us we're dead."

They were caught an hour later.

Arya's Craven was nearly crawling, and the Hound's Stranger faring only slightly better, when the riders came exploding up the path behind them, singing at the tops of their merry lungs and readying nets. Arya screamed and dug her heels into Craven's sides, but the horse only gave back a bored grunt, as if to say: "Listen, why don't you carry _me _for a while."

Sandor roared as he was brought crashing to the ground. His horse squealed in tandem, shooting its legs out and rolling a crazed white eye. Arya was netted cleanly and pulled off the back of Craven, who just kept plodding along down the path and was soon gone from sight. _I wish people would stop catching me in traps, _Arya thought angrily.

"Ho, ho, hello!" cried the leader of the horsemen as he brought his destrier around the two bound captives squirming in the road. The nets had tangled the Hound so badly that one of his feet was somehow sticking out from under an armpit. He shouted wordlessly, so great was his frustration and annoyance.

"We bring you good tidings, friendly travelers of the realm!" the riders' leader went on. "From good King Joffrey we come, yes, from King's Landing!"

"Let the kid go," Sandor grunted. "She's no one, a bastard's bastard. I'm the one you want."

"We want you both!" the man replied happily. "We want everybody. We're on a quest to apologize to everyone in the realm."

The Hound breathed furiously through his nostrils. "What?" he said.

"Good King Joffrey has had a shift in his spirit and declared the service of the gold cloaks at an end. We are now about a grand new work to bring his apology to every man, woman, and child who lives."

"What the shit are you talking about," Arya demanded from inside her net.

"He is sorry!"

"SORRY!" two dozen men at arms sang in a single great voice.

"For being!"

"BEING!"

"A little!"

"LITTLE!"

"_SHIT_!"

"FORBEINGALITTLE_SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT_!" the men sang victoriously.

The woods were silent for several long moments.

"Get the fuggoutta my face," the Hound said tiredly, rolling over and beginning to detangle the mildest of the knots that had formed.

"Can you write your names in our little book?" said someone else. The man climbed down off his horse and helped Arya with her net. "King Joff has ordered us to collect the signatures of everyone in Westeros, after we've apologized to them."

Arya wrote "Mary Katherine Longfellow" in the book. She passed it to Sandor, who scrawled "HUGH JASS" in a childlike hand. When the men had ridden off to find someone else to apologize to, Arya and the Hound appraised their inventory.

"We left everything but our weapons back in the woods a half day's ride from here," the Hound said, balancing on his palm the bent copper knife he'd stolen off a dead man six or seven towns back. "Your horse got away. We don't have any food or wine, and—"

Arya drove a hellacious karate chop into the side of his neck. The Hound coughed woundedly, turned, and sprayed vomit into the woods. Then he simply collapsed and began to cry. The bullshit had worn him down to a nub.

"_Valar morghulis_, bitch," said Arya, standing over him.


	5. 5: Tyrion

**TYRION**

* * *

The tallest dwarf in Westeros was smiling from ear to ear as he sat to draft his letter to Bronn. The mushroom Tyrion had eaten was still going strong almost two hours later, and now the texture of the wood was a delight under his fingers. He spent a few minutes just touching every part of the desk that he could reach. Then he got back in the chair and began to write.

"Dearest… favoritest… Bronn," Tyrion said aloud as he scribbled. A laughing spell overtook him and soon he was feeling the desk again, searching for hidden warps and secret grain patterns meant for his eyes only. And while he was down there feeling around, his mind whirled.

The letter Tyrion eventually finished sprawled to six pages, covered front and back with nearly microscopic cursive. In it were various ideas, commands, confessions, anecdotes, and threats. On page four, he spent an entire paragraph admonishing Bronn for a recent bad haircut before switching gears completely and inviting the sellsword knight to share the management duties of a new aquarium business Tyrion was planning to start. One of the pages started with a story about growing up on Casterly Rock and eventually turned into an exhaustive grocery list. At the bottom of the final page, Tyrion drew over two hundred tiny mushrooms.

The letter was a masterpiece. He'd put to words things that were impossible to even mentally articulate. It was his finest work, the very finest of all. He danced out of his apartments and off to find a raven.

"Find Bronn!" he screamed at the little bird as he tied the letter to its leg.

"Find bomb," the bird said.

"Find _Bronn,_" Tyrion corrected, and tossed the bird into the sky. It flapped, rose, and sailed off over the rooftops of King's Landing. Tyrion stood proudly on the steps of the rookery, smiling a giant's smile as he watched the bird depart.

"Bronn can't read, can he?" Tyrion said aloud. He was still grinning. "He's illiterate."

The bird flew out of sight.


	6. 6: Thoros

**THOROS**

* * *

The day greeted the red priest Thoros of Myr with a dazzling flourish. When he rose and lifted the flap of his tent, the golden bars of sunshine slanting down through the trees looked like the fiery lances of the Lord of Light himself. Thoros breathed deeply, smiled.

He was moving to draw the day's first horn of ale when one of his Brothers came jogging through the forest, his tunic askew. Thoros saw the man coming and sighed. He poured quickly, and drank quicker. He already knew what was the matter.

"Thoros," the man said breathlessly when he'd reached the red priest's tent. Thoros came out and put his hand on his Brother's shoulder.

"Where?" he asked kindly.

It wasn't far. They found Lord Beric sprawled at the base of a large tree. His legs were splayed in a limp V shape, and his arms dangled at his waist. He was hung by the neck from a long belt looped over a branch. His ringmail and boiled leather garments were flung unceremoniously to the side, and his bare penis lay against one thigh like a tired snake. Lord Beric's surviving eye bulged from a face which was very much dead.

"Who did this?" Thoros demanded.

"Lord Beric did it," the young Brother told him awkwardly.

"He committed suicide?"

"Well…" The man shuffled. "Not on purpose, I think."

Thoros took a step back and covered his face with one hand.

"It looks like he may have been... choking the chicken."

"Feeling the eel," Thoros replied with pained resignation.

"Spinning some records."

"Polishing his longsword."

The young man shook his head sadly. "Clasping the cucumber."

"Drilling for oil."

"Scratching Yoda behind his ears."

"Celebrating 'Palm Sunday'."

"Shaking hands with the milkman."

Thoros shook his head in disgust. "Please, Brother—tell no one of this."

Later, when Thoros had gotten Lord Beric back on his feet and redressed, the two shared a horn in Thoros' tent.

"Dude, it was amaaaaazing," said Beric, leaning back and holding his palms about two feet apart, perhaps trying to convey the size of the fatal orgasm. "That's the best invention ever. I mean—"

"My lord!" Thoros cried, and put his cup down with a hard _thack_. "It is not appropriate to waste R'hllor's gifts like this!"

"I'm not wasting anything!" Beric shouted. Then he grinned. "Except for that load last night."

"Oh? Let's recap," Thoros said. "In the past fortnight, I've had to bring you back nine different times. Do you think the Lord of Light found much amusement in your third recent death, when you got drunk as fuck with the men and one of them tried to shoot that onion off your head at thirty paces?"

"But that was hilarious!" Beric protested. "Everyone laughed."

"Or what about two nights later, when you died trying to do the splits?"

Beric shuddered. "Okay," he admitted, "that was a bad one. I'm definitely never trying to do the splits again, no matter how many of our Brothers dare me."

"Your last words that time were, 'I think one of my acorns just popped.'"

"Enough," Beric said, holding up his hands. "Don't remind me."

"Your first deaths were noble, and even quite badass," Thoros admitted. "A hanging and a couple variations of 'chopped-in-half,' including that time you died in single combat against the Hound. The Lord of Light loved those ones."

"But…?"

"_But_," Thoros said seriously, meeting Lord Beric's eyes, "his gifts may run out if you keep wasting them. Do you understand?"

Beric swirled his ale and looked dejectedly downward. "Are you telling me I can't shuck anymore corn while strangling myself?"

"That's _exactly _what I'm telling you, my lord."

"Well, to hell with that," Lord Beric said merrily. "I'm switching religions if that's the case."

Thoros wordlessly took the flagon of ale in his hands and chugged for thirty unbroken seconds. When the flagon was empty, he loosed a ringing belch, stood, and left his lordship alone in the tent.


	7. 7: Samwell

**SAMWELL**

* * *

Sam's craven heart had chambers enough to house each and every one of the things that went bump in the night. He feared ghosts; he feared mummies; he feared zombies, devils, and the chupacabra; he was afraid of being kicked by somebody while he was asleep. Sam had spent long hours agonizing over how he could possibly survive if a bobcat suddenly smashed in his window and pounced him. He was afraid of spiders. Afraid of mold, of poison, of shitting his pants. Afraid that someone would notice he was fat. Afraid he might someday get so fat he would implode, like a neutron star. Afraid of responsibility, of ridicule, of romance.

But most of all, Samwell Tarly was afraid of the story Jon Snow had told him the previous evening over a crackling campfire while the two brothers sat together roasting marshmallows.

"They called him Night's King," said Jon Snow, arching his eyebrows spookily. The flames danced across the faces of the two boys, deepening their eye sockets, making skulls of their faces. Sam gritted his teeth and watched his browning marshmallow.

"But before that, he was the Lord Commander of the Night's Watch," Jon went on. He turned his stick to bronze the other sides of the three marshmallows he'd speared. "The thir_teenth _Lord Commander, in fact. That's important because thirteen is the scariest number."

Sam felt a shiver crawl down his left shoulder to his buttock. He was scared of the number thirteen.

"My little brother Bran told me this story, and Old Nan told it to him."

"Who's Old Nan?" Sam asked.

"Just our crazy old lady we kept at Winterfell. My dad got to have one because he was the lord."

Sam squinted, unsure what to make of this answer.

"It's not that weird or anything," Jon insisted. "It's kind of like having a fool. Kings get to keep a fool, so… maybe lords get to keep an old lady."

"That could make sense," Sam admitted. "My lord father kept a fool named Fuckup. Fuckup had a neck tattoo and father made him sleep in the stables."

Jon laughed. "But about Night's King—"

Sam gasped.

"Night's King," Jon went on, "wasn't afraid of anything. And that was his downfall. He was so fearless that he—okay, listen to this. What's the most fearless thing you can possibly think of?"

Sam looked into the flames. He thought for a long time. Then he turned and met Jon Snow's eyes.

"Fucking a girl directly in her va-jay-jay," he said, in the same tone one might use to order an execution.

"Daaaaamn," said Jon Snow. He took his stick out of the flames and examined the marshmallows. "That would indeed be pretty fearless, my dude. And check this out. _That's_ _exactly what he did. _Only you know _what_?!"

"What?!"

"_She was also undead!"_

Sam never told anyone, but at this point in Jon's story, he wet his pants. Just a tiny bit. A few drops. But it happened.

"Undead?!" he cried.

Jon gave him a solemn nod. "Yep. He was walking on top of the Wall I guess, looking at stuff with his scope, and he saw this super hot undead girl down in the Haunted Forest. And he knew what he had to do."

Sam was quiet for a minute. "You're not telling me he just went down there and banged her. One of the _wights_?"

"Yeah! I mean, she was an ungodly hot one, though."

"You're filling me full of shit."

"Not shitting you in the slightest," Jon assured his friend. "She was about five-nine, a _little_ bit thicc, like a hundred and forty-five pounds or so. Ass like a peach, _amazing_ boobs. Chestnut black hair. I don't know if she had bangs, but I'm thinking she probably had bangs. And eyes as blue as sapphires shot through with _moon_light, my dude."

The story was absurd, but in the dark of the night, with snowflakes falling around them and the fire crackling at their feet, Sam realized he believed every word of it.

"It happened," Jon confirmed, as if reading Sam's mind. "I mean, crazy Old Nan said it did. Like a thousand years ago or something."

Sam nodded. It did seem like something that might happen a thousand years ago. "So then what?" he asked.

"Well, when he gave her his seed, he gave her his soul. And basically that made him become Night's King."

Sam took his marshmallow out of the fire and blew on it. When he was satisfied, he popped it into his mouth. "Whu'ss thuh uckshully mean though?" he chew-spoke.

"Pretty much that he also became undead, and got way more badass. He was totally immune to shadow damage. And he was immortal. And also he had a sword and shield made out of bones and people's guts and shit like that."

"Whoa!" Sam cried, spraying bits of congealed sugar into the fire.

"I know. So all the other guys in the Night's Watch realized they were in the presence of a playa like no otha, and they pretty much became his undead army. But then the Stark in Winterfell and the wildlings joined forces to kill him."

"How did they kill him?" Sam was enraptured.

Jon smiled. "How do you think?"

Both boys simultaneously yelled, "UPPERCUT!"

"Yes, dude!" Sam and Jon high-fived. "_Nothing's_ more badass than an uppercut!"

"You know it, brother," Jon agreed. "So that's the story of Night's King. What do you think?"

Sam had felt energized and excited while he'd been sitting before the crackling fire with his best friend in the Watch, but tonight, alone, atop the Wall, looking down into the Haunted Forest just as the Lord Commander in the story had done, Sam was utterly terrified. The wind was howling in his ears and he hadn't eaten in almost three hours. He had to pee so bad it was hard to believe, and even though there was no one else up here, even though there was _no possible negative consequence _to just peeing over the edge of the Wall, Sam was too craven to do it. It was an awful night, and he wished Jon had never told him that stupid story. Of course it couldn't be true. It was a Penthouse letter from a thirteen-year-old. But still—

Down in the Haunted Forest Sam saw a flash of sapphire blue. His blood froze in his veins. It couldn't be! He didn't want to raise his scope and find out. Even though it was impossible, he didn't want to find out. He couldn't. He…

Sam raised the scope. He scanned the trees, the snowdrifts, the—

_The girl._

There she was, in a small clearing. She was about five-nine, divinely thicc, chestnut black hair and an ass that—

_No!_

Yes. The undead girl turned her gaze directly toward Sam. Impossible though it was, from miles away, she met his eyes through the lens of his scope.

And she smiled.


	8. 8: Cersei

**CERSEI**

* * *

The Kingsguard were startled by Queen Cersei's scream when she arrived at court and saw Joffrey seated on the floor at the foot of the Iron Throne in the lotus position wearing nothing but a loincloth and his golden crown. Joffrey was not the whole problem, however. Next to him, on the other side of the Throne, dressed in an identical loincloth was the Imp.

Joffrey lifted his head and gazed serenely across the room at his mother. "I knew you would come," he said.

"What is the meaning of this!" Cersei shrieked. She knocked Ser Loras aside and went for Tyrion's throat.

"Nay, nay!" Tyrion cried, laughing and wiggling and scooting nimbly away from Cersei. He fell to one side, rolled through her legs, was up on his feet again. She chased him in circles around the Iron Throne. The onlookers were stunned to silence.

"You gave my boy the Spoor of Madness!" Cersei screamed.

"Mother, enough," Joffrey thundered. "I _stole _the Spoor from Uncle's apartments. It was I who was at fault, and the Seven saw fit to punish my cruelty and foolishness with enlightenment."

"Sweet sister," Tyrion said breathlessly, returning to the foot of the Throne at Joffrey's side, "take off that stifling dress and try a loincloth. In fact, try a mushroom."

"You bastard!"

"Mother!" Joffrey scolded sharply.

Court proceeded in this fashion for a time before Cersei finally calmed down enough to agree to take her seat.

"The first matter at hand is that I have raised my uncle Tyrion, the greatest and possibly tallest dwarf I have ever known, to the office of Vice King."

Cersei's scream was so shrill that it shattered Grand Maester Pycelle's wineglass, filling the old man's lap with Dornish red.

"Mother, we shall have to gag you if you cannot contain your joy," Joffrey warned.

_"__I've had enough of this farce!"_ Cersei shot back. "Get out of that dirty loincloth at once and back into your royal raiment! You don't get to eat a psychedelic mushroom one time and turn my court into some dirty-footed free-love fuckfest!"

"Let the queen scream," Vice King Tyrion suggested calmly. "Many people enjoy screaming. It can be very invigorating."

"May I scream, too?" asked Ser Loras with a shy smile.

"Brother," Joffrey said with loving sincerity, "you may."

A few seconds later half the court was loosing great throaty screams, just to try it out.

"The vice king was right!" cried Grand Maester Pycelle. "That was excellent." He lifted his robe and began sucking on a corner, trying to get at his Dornish red.

"The Sorriness Brigades," Joffrey said. "Let us hear of their progress."

A man in a dirty golden cloak stood and began to explain how the Brigades had had luck enough only to collect seven signatures so far. "This Mary Katherine Longfellow had excellent penmanship," the former gold cloak admitted, "but I can only make out three of the others. Someone named Gort, I think? A wobbly-looking one that might say Hot Pie, and some jokester has named himself 'Hugh Jass.' The rest may have just as well been signed by wild animals."

"Why is the work proceeding so slowly?" Joffrey wanted to know.

"Well, Your Grace," said the man, "it seems many people do not like to see our horses approaching. Many have fled at the sight of us."

"Did they not see the Banner of Sorrow?"

"They may not have understood its significance, Your Grace."

The Banner of Sorrow was the new sigil of the Sorriness Brigades. On its field of red and gold checks stood a crown with stink lines rising from it, signifying Joffrey's revelation that he had been a stupid little shit prior to his ego death.

"Perhaps the crown should be larger," suggested the Grand Maester.

"Maybe the whole thing should be larger," Joffrey decided. "And more stink lines on the crown. It doesn't look that stinky from a distance."

"Does anyone remember that parachute game?" Vice King Tyrion put in. "Where a bunch of kids—or dwarves—would floof a parachute up and then run inside and sit on the edges and laugh because it had risen up to a huge dome shape around everyone?"

"Of fucking _course_!" Ser Loras shouted jubilantly.

"Uncle," Joffrey gushed. "You've done it again."

"What do parachutes have to do with anything?" Cersei demanded.

"The Banner of Sorrow is too small," Joffrey said, rising to his royal feet to make his decree. He pumped his fists in the air. "From this day forward, the Sorriness Brigades shall go forth armed with _Parachutes _of Sorrow!"

"Parachute of Sorrow!" cheered the assembled court. "Parachute, parachute! Pair, a, shoot! Pair, a, shoot!"

"Also let's roll the parachutes around in shit for a while first, so they smell stinky as well as look stinky," Joffrey said.

Tyrion was crying happily. "This is the greatest day of court I've ever seen," he said.

"Long live the king! Long live the vice king!" someone shouted from the back.

Cersei reached wordlessly down and began pinching at the meat of her thigh. She dug her thumbnail in, squeezing and ripping and tearing. Blood began to puddle on the floor beside her foot. The relief was bliss. Trying not to lose her mind in King's Landing had been a colossal mistake. Stone cold crazy was the only way to get through the day.


	9. 9: Jon

**JON**

* * *

Things had been a bit grim and doom-n-gloom and "fuck this" and "fuck that" around the Night's Watch ever since the Old Bear's big ranging adventure had ended with the Old Bear getting murdered by a brother of the Watch and most of the rangers falling to the wildlings or the undead. Ole "Turncloak" Jonny Snow was mostly back in everyone's good graces, but there was still the matter of choosing a new Lord Commander for the Night's Watch.

"It should be me," boomed Grenn from atop one of the great oaken tables where the men of the Watch took their meals together. Someone immediately hit him with a glass of wine, but he barely flinched.

"I'm awesome," Grenn explained. "I'll make the Watch great again."

"Shut up, Grenn, you're an anti-vaxxer," someone shouted from a few tables away.

A turkey leg hit Grenn on the shoulder, but he repelled that attack too. He picked up a candlestick in each hand and clacked them together like swords.

"Grenn! Grenn!" he yelled, trying to get the chant going. "Grenn! Grenn! Grenn. Grenn… Grenn…."

"Get down, you idiot," Janos Slynt bellowed. "You're making a fool of yourself. I am the Crown's obvious preferred choice for Lord Commander."

"Be silent, Janos, you candy corn little bitch," came Maester Aemon's reedy old man's voice from the end of the hall. "We have to do that crazy voting thing. That's the way it's always been."

The men broke off into murmurs and huddles of suspicion. The crazy voting thing of which Aemon spoke was an archaic system the Night's Watch had always used to elect their new Lords Commander. The process was notorious for its multiple voting currencies, elimination rounds, and the inevitable required recounts. No one ever completely remembered how to do it. They had to get out the rule book every time.

"Okay, it says here you have to… to line up the holes," said Ser Alliser, unrolling and spreading a withered parchment across a ceremonial election table. He pressed the parchment more or less flat and arranged it so the various holes lined up. The process was apparently to be quite thorough: there were several strange golden artifacts on a nearby table that were obviously to be used in some way, and buckets on the floor held enormous collections of beads, counters, and other small riff raff. It looked like they were about to play some type of excrutiating board game.

"You can all go fuck yourselves," Maester Aemon wailed four hours later, after the end of yet another voting round that had failed to produce anything like a clear winner. "I'm going to go smoke a joint and go to bed. Don't give a damn who gets to be the new Lord Commander—job probably sucks anyway."

"He's right," said Janos Slynt, trying to muffle a yawn. "I can't follow this whole thing with the scales at all. I just don't get why we have to be weighing anything to pick a Lord Commander."

"For the ninth fucking time," Ser Alliser thundered, "the scales are for—"

"Enough!" someone roared. "Let's adjoin." No one replied verbally, but general agreement was obvious. The men shuffled off to their various nightly destinations, their bunks or to bowls of hot spiced wine in the kitchens. It was plain as day that the selection of a new Lord Commander would be no small task.

"Has anyone seen Sam?" Jon asked Pyp and Satin, who he found kissing on one of the bunkbeds.

"Nah," Pyp said.

"I don't think he was even at the voting," Jon said, feeling increasingly worried. Sam had seemed really scared by that story he'd laid on him the other night about Night's King. Campfire tales were supposed to be all in good fun, but Jon knew Sam was a little more sensitive to fear than most. He decided to go out and look for his friend.

"We'll come, too," said Satin. The three boys made their way through the barracks looking for other willing members of an impromptu search party. Grenn was antsy from all the boring voting and couldn't wait to stretch his legs, so he agreed to go along. Maester Aemon met the boys in a hallway of the keep and ended up joining in the effort too, even though he was an old man, and completely blind. Before long nearly half the Night's Watch was hunting for Sam.

Jon didn't fear that Sam had deserted—the chunky boy was simply too craven to go through with it. His fear was that Sam may have gone to the Godswood for some reason and run afoul of a wight.

They took the tunnel beneath the Wall. They got as far as the second gate before they began to hear something.

"Is that—" said Pyp.

"That kinda sounds like—"

Before they'd reached the third gate, the men were all certain of what they were hearing. It was, as they say, the sounds of two hearts beating as one.

Jon came to a breathless stop before the final gate, gathered himself, and then set to opening it. The black brothers gathered behind him stood waiting eagerly. The sounds coming from the Godswood were very loud now. A rhythmic female moan. An impassioned male grunt. A soft cry. Sharp intakes of breath. Dead leaves crackling in a fist.

Their footsteps pounded through the woods, then drew to a quick stop as they reached the Godswood.

"Oh my… sweet, sweet Seven," said Dareon the singer. He wiped a hand down his face. He looked in utter disbelief at what he was seeing. Several sounds of assent came from the gathered men.

"_Sam?_" Jon cried, holding forth a torch to light the lurid scene unfolding beneath the solemn gaze of the Weirwood.

The enormous nude bulk of Samwell Tarly was propped against the holy white tree. His legs were parted, and bobbing between them was a crown of chestnut black hair. Attached to that hair was the head of a beautiful dead woman. She was on her knees with her big beautiful butt thrust into the air, wiggling from side to side as she serviced her new king. Through her rotted cheek they could all behold Sam's colossal member throbbing.

Jon stumbled forward through the litter of crumbling red leaves. "Sam, what are you _doing_?"

The dead girl missed not a beat. She kept hard at work while Samwell, very slowly, clearly annoyed, lifted a pair of dark sunglasses from the ground beside him and slipped them carefully onto his round face. He turned blankly to Jon Snow, then to the rest of the Watch.

"Slaying," he said.

The brothers were struck utterly silent. Moments passed. Suddenly Maester Aemon pushed his way through to the front of the crowd. He stood and gawked sightlessly. At last he lifted his withered hands and began, slowly, to clap.

Clap.

Clap.

Clap.

Some others picked it up. Soon five were clapping, then ten, then twenty. The applause picked up steam. It became a roar. The roar turned into a fevered chant of victory.

"SLAY-_ER_! SLAY-_ER_! SLAY-_ER_!"

The Night's Watch had found its new Lord Commander.


	10. 10: Jaime

**JAIME**

* * *

Bald, bearded, one-handed Jaime Lannister was becoming a new man. He hadn't just kept all his power in the sword hand which had been lopped off by one of Vargo Hoat's fat sellswords; he'd kept all his evil in there, too.

As soon as the hand was gone, Jaime began to transform. Brienne of Tarth had noticed first—Jamie had gone from calling her things like "Wench," "Biscuit-butt," "Pug-fuglet," "Gregor Clegane Lookin' Ass," and "Ootgroot" to somewhat more respectful nicknames, such as "Blondie," "Regular-butt," and "Powder Keg."

"Hey Powder Keg!" Jaime shouted from aback his horse. Brienne, several yards further down the trail, turned wearily to him.

"It's Brienne," she said.

"That's what I said! Hey," he told her, drawing his horse up alongside hers, "I just wanted to apologize."

"Why."

The horses' hooves clopped noisily as Jaime took a moment to compose his thoughts.

"For all that annoying shit I did," he summarized. "Throwing that dumb little boy out the window, trying to kill you in a sword fight… you know, et cetera."

"_Et cetera,_" Brienne said doubtfully.

"I mean, I've really turned a new leaf. This is it for me. Now that my masturbation hand is gone, I have to face up to the fact that I'm no longer the warrior I once was. Masturbating left-handed is _weird_, I'm telling you. It's like getting a handjob from an idiot."

Brienne pursed her lips and refused to speak.

"But all those left-handed handjobs really softened me up. I think I'm ready to try being a good guy again."

"Sure."

"No, really!" Jaime insisted.

"Oh yeah? What's your first good guy move gonna be?" Brienne asked flatly.

"I already went back to Harrenhal and saved you from the bear. That wasn't pretty good?"

Brienne snorted. "That bear was on the ropes. If you hadn't shown up to steal my kill, I would've blown those outlaw shitheads' minds. Bear guts all over the place, blood dripping off my tits, screaming at the moon—"

"You lie, Powder Keg!"

"—Chomping bear intestines like sausage links, swinging the spine around above my head like a flail, climbing inside the bear's corpse to gain its power and—"

_Christ, _Jaime thought helplessly.

_"_—Then I'd cut off your other hand, just for calling me a wench."

Jaime realized the only person he had yet told about becoming a good guy was Brienne herself. The wheels of his mind turned quickly and then locked into place. Since no one else knew about it, his good guy transformation could easily be postponed for another day.

"Ha!" Jaime yelled suddenly, leaping off his horse and onto the back of Brienne's. She screamed and shot her heels up into the horse's ribs, sending it on a wild forward push down the road. Then, almost automatically, Brienne sprung up and out of the stirrups and stood atop the saddle like a surfer with her arms out for balance. She was facing backwards, looking bewildered, at Jaime, who was seated on the horse's butt, behind the saddle, looking just as bewildered. Brienne planted her foot on Jaime's chest and let out a triumphant _Yah _as she pushed him off the back of the horse. He screamed as he hit the road and bounced onto the shoulder. Brienne surfed her horse around in a circle, drew her sword, and trotted up to where Jaime lay bleeding in the grass.

"Stupid wench," he growled, clutching his stump. His eyes were wild with pain and fury.

"It's Powder Keg," Brienne said quietly. Then three feet of steel lashed out toward Jaime. He had just enough time to think _NOT AGAIN! _before the shocking cold bite of the sword landed in his left wrist and sent his only remaining hand spinning off into the brush.

"OH MY GOD!" Jaime screeched breathlessly, lifting up both his stumps to the sky, as if for inspection. "OH MY GOD, IT HAPPENED TWICE! OH MY GOD! OH MY GOOOOD!"

"You crybaby," Brienne said. She kicked the dead hand back into the road. Jaime writhed toward it, sobbing, extending his stumps like huge fumbling chopsticks. Brienne plucked the hand up by the pinkie and threw it. Jaime watched his hand sail over the road and into the weeds on the other side.

_I will strangle this bitch with my feet, _Jaime's mind roared. He was feverish with outrage, pain, and fear. _I will dig my toes into her carotid artery and tear it open with my toenails. I will kick her nose back into her brain with my heel._

"We'll have to ride a faster now," Brienne fretted as she remounted her horse. Jaime, still lying in the road in a puddle of blood, looked up at her in disbelief. "We lost like six or seven minutes messing around back there."

"I lost another hhh-hhHHHHAAAAAAAND back there!"

"Oh, shut up. How were you expecting to be a good guy with one of those evil hands still attached? I did you a favor."

"_It wasn't the _hands_ that was evil_!" Jaime roared.

"Don't kid yourself. How many people have you ever killed with your _feet_, Kingslayer? Like one percent of your total kills? Or even less, I bet."

Jaime screamed, gaping in horror at his twin stumps. He thought he might pass out.

That night, after he was finally able to get to sleep by drinking about three skins of wine and rolling his penis back and forth between his wrists to masturbate, he dreamed of the two golden hands with which he would clobber Brienne of Tarth into a shape even more hideous than God's original design.


	11. 11: Jon

**JON**

* * *

The brothers of the Watch crowd surfed Sam and his ghastly bride back through the tunnel to Castle Black. Sam complained numerous times when the tidal motions of the crowd pulled his dong temporarily out of the mouth of the undead girl, but eventually they reached the gates and carried him inside to install him in the Lord Commander's chambers.

It was a night more wild than any could remember. What would it mean for the Watch? Jon fretted away the dark hours in his steward's cell, wondering if the Lord Commander would send for him. And at about five in the morning, as the first new light was fracturing across the peaks of wilding mountains beyond the Wall, Sam called for his steward with several loud raps on the floor.

Jon hustled up the stairs and knocked on the door. "Come in," Sam bellowed mannishly. His voice had dropped several octaves since last night. Jon entered and found Sam sprawled naked on the Lord Commander's featherbed, fingerpicking on a lute and still wearing the sunglasses. The undead woman had tastefully dressed herself in some furs and was seated at the writing desk, apparently drafting a letter to someone. She looked up at Jon and gave him a shy smile as he closed the door. "Yes, my dude?" Jon asked.

Sam looked up. "Check this out, man." He began to unleash a wild lute solo, 32nd notes for days, up and down the neck and then back up again, making his own harmonies and effortlessly forming barre chords unplayable by mortal men since the Age of Heroes. Jon's mouth dropped open. Sam stood up and windmilled his head as he shredded.

"Whoa!" Jon cried.

Sam finally concluded the solo with a flourish and a death metal scream, and then smashed the lute over an iron brazier. Strings whined and wooden shrapnel rained against Jon's legs. Sam dusted off his hands and stepped clumsily into a loin cloth. "You met Tammy?"

Jon looked to the undead girl. She gave him another quick smile and then went back to her letter. "Pleasameetcha," Jon mumbled, mildly horrified.

"Jon, I need you to send a letter to my lord father, Randyll Tarly."

"Oh. Uh, I mean, yes, my lord! What should it say?"

"That he's a mothafuckin _fake_," Sam shouted, beginning to beatbox. "A death without a _wake_. A flat broke, weak joke, clown ass dope, ain't even worth a trope, _nope_. Tell him he ain't never be famous, never be cool, never had no money, never had no bitches—ain't got nothin but snitches and ditches up at his bitchass Horn Hill. Tell 'at mothafucka to bring his ugly ass up north, to _my Wall_. The Wall calls, and if the bitch don't answer, I'm'a come for his ass. Tell him he's about to get buried up to his ovaries in a pit full of shit. You get all that down?"

Jon scribbled wildly.

"Could you also send a raven for me, Jon?" Tammy asked in a cute, lilting voice. She smiled. "I only just turned undead, like, a couple of days ago, I think?" Her blue eyes sparkled. "Um, and my mom and dad, out there with Mance's host, they might, like, not even know yet that I'm Night's Queen?"

"Sure, sure, no problem," Jon said, continuing to write.

"Have Ser Alliser bring me up a keg of rum, too," Sam told him. "That's right, bitch. A keg. Also some grapefruits."

"Anything else, my lord?"

"A knife to cut them with. And not some little pussy knife from the kitchens. Find me a gilded dagger from the armory. The finest blade the Watch has."

"My lord? Could I speak to you briefly in the hallway?"

"You can speak freely in front of Tammy," Sam replied. "She's cool."

Jon shuffled nervously. "My lord, could you… remove your sunglasses for a moment?"

Sam did so, and relief flooded Jon's heart. Sam's eyes had not gone undead blue—they were the same dull green as they'd always been. "I know what you were thinking," he said, his many chins bouncing as he nodded. "But no. She did not receive my seed, and thusly did not receive my soul. I'm no fool. I _wrap _my chili dog, Jon." Sam pointed to the wastebasket, where there was a small pile of damp sheepskin condoms he'd apparently fashioned himself. Jon found himself impressed.

"Now go, and be about my work."

"As you command, my dude," Jon said, and left the room. He found Ser Alliser in the common hall, gloomily picking his toenails with a bit of sharpened flint.

"The Lord Commander needs rum," Jon barked. "A keg."

Ser Alliser looked up. "A _keg_?" he said.

"Did I stutter? Yes, a keg. He wants it now."

Ser Alliser's mouth curled into an ugly shape, but he put his shoes back on and went to get the rum.

As Jon Snow hunted through a pile of armaments with the new blacksmith for the perfect grapefruit dagger, he began to ponder. It seemed forsaking your vows with an undead girl… actually… _wasn't_ that bad. In fact, it seemed kind of cool. Who had been the one to tell him not to get undead blowjobs, anyway? He couldn't even remember. Getting one had sure worked out well for Lord Commander Samwell, and now even Alliser Thorne couldn't refuse Jon's orders.

_What else, _he wondered, _were they lying about?_


	12. 12: Cersei

**CERSEI**

* * *

The flood of idiotic news from the Seven Kingdoms and even from abroad just kept sweeping in. There was no stopping it. Cersei sat and listened to one blithering moron after another, kept a perfectly straight face, and continued digging her secret hole in her leg. First a Summer Islander appeared before the court with a ridiculous story about how Daenerys Targaryen had made friends with a huge, bald eunich from the fighting pits of Mereen who went by the name of Strong Belwas.

_The stupidest fucking name I've ever heard, _Cersei growled in her mind while her face remained frozen in a bland smile. _You can't just give yourself an adjective and say it's part of your name. Nobody calls me Awesome Cersei._

"It cannot stand," the Summer Islander went on, resplendent in his cloak of green feathers. "It offends the senses. I can tolerate a eunich. I can even tolerate a large one. But a large, hairless eunich who refers to himself in the third person? That is unacceptable," he said.

"I happen to agree, but what, pray tell, should the Iron Throne do about this?" Cersei wanted to know. "I fail to see how this concerns King's Landing, or, indeed, any of the Seven Kingdoms in any conceivable way."

"I just don't like Daenerys hanging out with people like that," the Summer Islander complained. "I set sail for Westeros as soon as I was sure it was really her that I'd seen. It is known across the world that good King Joffrey has a tender heart and a creative mind when it comes to solving problems."

"Again," Cersei said slowly, "exactly what do you expect His Grace to do?"

But King Joffrey and Vice King Tyrion, once again in their loincloths, put their heads together and whispered for a moment.

"Mother, I know precisely what we should do," Joffrey said warmly. "We should send Daenerys a card."

"A card," Cersei repeated blackly.

"She will need all the cards she can get if her only friend is this… 'Strong Belwas.' There's no telling how dark of a place she must be in."

"Maybe Strong Belwas is a nice guy," Lord Varys offered.

After King Joffrey had sworn up and down that a greeting card for Daenerys would be arranged within a fortnight, the Summer Islander finally went away. The next man to address the court was a ragged sellsword in the service of the Tyrells. He spoke of Lord Randyll Tarly calling his banners and leading a fearsome host north, to the Wall.

"To fortify the Night's Watch?" Vice King Tyrion asked.

"No, Your Vice Grace," the sellsword continued shakily. "Lord Randyll marches _against _the Watch."

"What?" Cersei thundered. "What in seven hells for?"

"A raven came from Castle Black. Lord Randyll's fat son was elected Lord Commander by unanimous vote, and it is said that he's declared war on his father's House."

"That's absurd. The Night's Watch takes no part in the squabbles of the realm."

"It would seem," the sellsword said carefully, "that this is no longer so, Your Grace."

Cersei drained her wineglass. Her long throat worked as she swallowed and swallowed and swallowed again. She refilled it and drank that one, too. Then she hurled the empty glass at the sellsword. He dodged and it shattered on the ground. No one spoke. Cersei got up and weaved her way out of the court.

An hour later, she was in the fourth basement of the Red Keep's dungeons, having a weak-willed tormentor scourge her.

"Harder, you fuck!" she screamed. "Again! Your queen demands it!"

"Your Grace," the man cried, looking unhappily at the bloodied whip in his hands. "Are you… _sure_? Doesn't it _hurt_?"

Cersei flared her nostrils and let out a long, furious breath. "Not enough, it doesn't. Not with a little bitch like you behind the wheel. You're fired!" She stood up and went to the stone wall, where she began rubbing her destroyed back up and down, up and down, leaving a huge bloody path. She'd mined her leg wound for all it seemed to be worth; the dull gleam of her femur could be seen when she disrobed, and she dared not dig any further for fear of losing the leg entirely. No one wanted a one-legged queen.

When Cersei was finally satisfied, she put her dress back on, kicked the torturer in the shin as hard as she could, slapped his stubbly cheek, and spat in his face. "Idiot," she said on her way out. She went to the rookery and began writing a letter.

A few mornings later, Roose Bolton, the newly-minted Warden of the North, was rising from his marriage bed with Fat Walda. Walda slept noisily; she snored, muttered, and moved around all night long. Although no such diagnosis existed in Westeros, she in truth suffered from sleep apnea. An annoying wife, to be sure, but it was still possible she would give Roose a son to replace his crappy bastard Ramsay, who wouldn't quit hanging around the castle. The boy simply could not take a hint.

The lord of the Dreadfort sighed, dressed, shaved, and went to break his fast. To his surprise, one of his maesters was waiting for him with a letter.

"Here, m'lord," the maester said, bowing and backing away as Roose Bolton took the scrap of parchment and began to read. "We've had a raven, from King's Landing."

"What's it say, pops?" asked Ramsay. He was seated at the head table scratching at a bleeding pimple on his jaw.

Roose looked at him and shook his head. "It must be a jape. But this is written in her hand, I'm sure of it."

"What is it?"

"Cersei Lannister wishes to be flayed," he said.


	13. 13: Jaime

**JAIME**

* * *

The Kingslayer strode briskly into Lord Tywin's solar and seated himself at the head of the table to await his father. He was shaved, groomed, dressed in his golden armor, and had been more-or-less safely delivered to King's Landing by Brienne of Tarth, to whom he was now deeply indebted. Handless Jaime Lannister crossed his golden arms over his chest and waited.

When Lord Tywin finally entered and got a look at his son he stopped dead in his tracks.

"What have you done with your hands," he said.

Jaime uncrossed his arms and held them up to be examined. Where his golden wrists ended, his new hands began. The hands were a pair of swords, three feet each of gilded Valyrian steel, both terminating in cruel points that were slightly hooked. Jamie used one of his long hands to toss his white cloak back over his shoulder.

"My gods," Lord Tywin said softly. "Who did this to you?"

"No one you need concern yourself with, my lord," Jaime replied. He stood and looked down upon his father. "A woman who will soon learn about Lannisters and debts."

Lord Tywin and his son spoke long into the night. A pact of vengeance was sworn in blood for the lost hands, although in truth both men agreed that the new hands were in some ways an improvement. Jaime could no longer grip a traditional sword, but he could strap shields on both forearms and still rain a veritable storm of blades down upon his enemies. He demonstrated some new moves he'd been working on, first laying Lord Tywin's table in two with a leaping strike and then opening the feather pillow with a series of thrusts and stabs.

"Holy fuck," Lord Tywin breathed. "Never have I seen such badassery."

"And that's not all," Jaime said. "I've got the Keep's blacksmiths working on a pair of morning stars I'll be able to plug my wrists into. I imagine I'll be able to handle about four feet of chain, along with a ten pound ball. Maybe even longer chains if I'm on horseback."

The following morning Ser Jaime donned his Kingsguard armor and strolled through King's Landing with his long, one-fingered hands nearly sweeping the ground. A simpleton with a large black mole on his cheek pointed at Jaime and uttered a hooting laugh. Jaime smiled and waved at him.

"Handless, handless," the simpleton shrieked, cackling and leaping up and down. "No-Hands Jaime!"

"Oh?" Jaime replied, sliding first one of his long hands into the simpleton's belly and then the other. "Then what are these?"

"Whoa!" cried a little boy who was walking by. "_Cool_! Mom, did you see that?"

"You bet your sweet ass I saw it," the boy's mother said. She dropped her satchel of groceries and ran over to touch Jaime's hands. Jaime stood proudly and let the growing crowd surround him. They were all impressed by the new hands.

"Mom, I want hands like that!" the little boy screamed. "When you're older," his mother told him absently, fondling Jaime's left hand in a sort of sexual trance.

Jaime had a splendid day showing off his new hands to everybody. The only bad thing that happened was when an old woman wanted him to sign an autograph and he realized he'd have to hold the quill in the crook of his elbow. While trying to dip it in the ink pot, the pot spilled and soiled the pristine white plate of Jaime's Kingsguard raiment. In a blind and reflexive fury he had cleaved the old woman in twain. This was received somewhat poorly by the crowd.

"She only wanted a autograph," someone opined. "You shouldn't'a did that, Kingslayer."

"Grannyslayer," someone else said.

_Damn it, _Jaime realized. _I was supposed to start turning into a good guy. Damn you, Brienne! Damn it all!_

"Shut up," Jaime said sullenly. He kicked the old woman's torso in the ribs and then walked back home to the Red Keep. Tomorrow he would work on becoming a good guy for sure… unless the morning stars were finished.


	14. 14: The Mountain

**THE MOUNTAIN**

* * *

They called Ser Gregor Clegane "The Mountain That Rides." They called him "The Enormity," "The Great Dog," and once, while drunk, Grand Maester Pycelle had even called him "The Beefcastle." His many names were spoken across the land in fearful hushes, behind cupped hands. So infamous were his deeds they had to cover his name with euphemisms and insults so they wouldn't have to accept the fact of his essential humanity. The fact that Ser Gregor was a _real person_. No one wanted to believe that a man who was so brutal and so big might have big _feelings, _too.

He sat this morning on an overturned barrel, in the courtyard of a ruined castle somewhere high in the mountains, amid rays of sunshine leaking through cloud cover to paint dapples on the rotting stone and rubble. His men were milling around in search of loot and/or any possible wenches to be had, though any discovered living this high up were bound to be scrawny, stringy, and socially awkward at best. Between two enormous mailed fingers Ser Gregor delicately pinched a dandelion. He stared at it though the narrow slit in his helm. Ser Gregor creaked as he turned his head slightly to the side, so like the black dogs of his House sigil, trying to interpret the flower.

Something unusual had happened to him yesterday. He'd gone to one of the seedier King's Landing inns and set about his usual weekend routine for letting off a little bit of steam: raping all the prostitutes and the proprietor, killing some or most of them, cannibalizing the corpses, and making jewelry out of the finger bones. Just regular Ser Gregor stuff, nothing too fancy or over-the-top. But then... _something happened._

An hour before Gregor had departed for the brothel, King Joffrey had offered him a small, twisted mushroom. It had tasted like grimy shit-stuffed mold, but Joffrey had seemed very insistent he eat it. Ser Gregor had thought no further about the mushroom until, all at once, he found himself in the middle of a murderous rampage doing something truly terrible.

Ser Gregor was pondering his own actions.

It occurred to him that he really shouldn't be doing this. In fact, he should _never _do this, or anything like this, ever again. He was horrified at all the blood and flabby blue snakes of intestines strewn about the inn. _Did I really _cause _all this? _Ser Gregor wondered, lost in a daze of ecstasy and impending doom. _Am I… a _bad guy_?_

The rest of the night had dissolved into a confused kaleidoscope of color and sound and horrific premonitions of the Others creeping over the Wall to slaughter all mankind, but it was mostly the way that mushroom had made him realize he might be a bad guy. _That _was the real nightmare.

All plants were now suspect. The dandelion made him want to cry. He felt trapped in his armor, trapped in this terrible curse of bigness that had doomed him to a career of malevolence and destruction in the service of the Lannisters. He wanted nothing more than to hug his brother Sandor and to weep before the flower. Just one tear, just this once.

A bloody tear rolled down the side of Ser Gregor's face.

"I'm sorry," he belched mournfully. "Please for_give_ me."

"The hell?" said one of Gregor's men, a stout young idiot in a halfhelm and a dirty ringmail shirt. He finished pissing on a pile of stones and tucked his organ away. "What did you just say?"

"I said I'm _sorry_," Gregor thundered.

"Ser, you're not _sorry_. You're Gregor Clegane! Lord Tywin's mad dog! The greatest slaughterhouse the realm has ever seen! _Sorry_?! Why on earth would you be _sorry _about anything?"

"THAT'S NOT TRUE!" Gregor roared. He crushed the dandelion in his fist and decapitated the man who'd spoken to him with a karate chop. "I _AM _SORRY!"

Ser Gregor proved how sorry he was by killing all his men, who were just as bad as he had been. The first ten or twenty fell to his longsword but he eventually sank into the _joie de combat _and just tore the remaining fools to pieces with his hands. When he was finished he settled onto a boulder to have a chew on one of the legs he'd ripped off and work on a new finger bone bracelet. His new career as a good guy hung just over the horizon of his mind like a golden city, a promised land, an El Dorado in Westeros. He _had _to get there.

It seemed to Ser Gregor that he'd ought to join the Sorriness Brigades to bring both his apology and King Joffrey's to all the mortals of the realm, but he had no idea where they were. He decided to make his way north, apologizing to whomever he encountered and righting any past wrongs that he could. Sated and sorrowful, Ser Gregor burrowed into the pile of his men's corpses, curled himself into a ball, and slept the sleep of the just.


	15. 15: Tyrion

**TYRION**

* * *

The king and the vice king emerged together in their royal loincloths and crowns from the doors of the Great Sept. Vice King Tyrion had fashioned his own crown from a rope and four or five eagle feathers, making him look like some type of crippled tribal shaman. They were both drenched in oily sweat. "Bro," King Joffrey said, "let's go for a ride."

Vice King Tyrion grinned.

Thirty minutes later they were flying together down the streets of King's Landing in a royal cart drawn by a team of Kingsguard knights on destriers. The side of the cart was streaked with the vice king's vomit. The cart drew to a halt at a crossroads, right beside a man on horseback who was patiently waiting for his turn to cross.

"Hey!" Tyrion screamed at the man. He stood up and slapped the side of the royal cart. "Hey you! You want to buy some milk of the poppy?"

The man flicked his eyes at the king and the vice king without moving his head. Then he looked at the Kingsguard, who did not return his gaze. He said nothing.

"I'm talking to you!" Vice King Tyrion said. Suddenly he vomited again, splattering the man's horse's hooves and causing it to dance uneasily away. "This shit is almost one hundred percent pure!" he insisted. The man tried as hard as he could to ignore Tyrion but it was not possible. He was trapped until it was their turn to cross.

"I just got back from Qarth!" Tyrion shrieked. "You don't _believe me_? I'm telling you the truth, you gringo bastard! Come back over here!"

King Joffrey watched impassively as Vice King Tyrion resumed drumming on the side of the cart. Then Tyrion reached over and slapped the man on the shoulder. The man flew instantly into an apoplectic rage, thrashing his hands in the air and screaming obscenities at the vice king.

"You fucking little freak! What's wrong with you? I'll kill you if you touch me again!"

"One hundred percent _puuuuuure_," Tyrion roared. Suddenly the sign changed and it was their turn to cross. The man bit his heels into the horse's sides and went rocketing off down the street.

"Catch him," King Joffrey suggested. The Kingsguard obeyed, once again drawing the cart up alongside the man's horse and keeping its pace. They were now traveling quite rapidly.

"You won't get hooked! Come on, you pussy!" Vice King Tyrion screamed over the side of the cart. The man seemed utterly shocked that his tormentors were back. His eyes bulged disbelievingly from his skull.

Finally the Kingsguard cut in front of him. The man's horse screamed and tried to dodge but there was no place to go. It tumbled to its side in the dirt and cobblestones and flung the man off to land in a broken heap on the side of the road. As the royal cart drew away, King Joffrey looked back and watched the bloodied man crawl weakly into an alley. "Let's stop at an inn," he said. "I need _red meat. _I need _nutrition_."

"Good idea," Tyrion agreed. "I feel a little lightheaded. Find an inn with whores, Alphonse."

"I'm Boros Blount, Your Vice Grace," said Ser Boros.

Tyrion waved him off and reclined on a silk pillow in the back of the cart. After a while he began to hum.


	16. 16: The Wall

**THE WALL**

* * *

Dawn.

Light came slowly over the Wall, creeping and cautious like the hand of a worried lover. Nothing moved. The world turned from black to violet to silver to gold, and there was no sound but the shrieking wind and the flapping of the new standard of the Night's Watch, mounted obstinately in the courtyard of Castle Black. Lord Commander Samwell had ordered a new sigil be made for his new Watch: a pair of gleaming undead eyes slashed across the familiar black field. The Lord Commander had fought viciously to include a pair of enlarged testicles below the eyes to indicate virility, manliness, strength, and coolness, but he'd been voted down two nights ago, when the design was being finalized.

"The bitch must know," Samwell had cried. "He must know that _he is in the North. _He must feel the wind cutting his flesh and ripping at his soul! The balls will put the fear of God into him!"

"Trust me, man, the bitch will know," said Dareon, whose drawing talent had earned him the duty of designing the new sigil. "Don't worry about _that_. All I'm saying is the eyes look cooler without the fuckin' balls down below them. You don't have balls on your face. If we're doing balls, we might as well get rid of the eyes entirely and put a dick. At least that'll make sense with the balls."

"What about _only _the balls?" Maester Aemon had inquired.

"Oh, come on," Tammy complained. "That guy's blind! He can't even _see _the sigil. He shouldn't get a vote. And besides, we need the eyes. They look really cool. The eyes will scare Lord Randyll worse than the balls."

That, however, remained to be seen. Lord Randyll Tarly's host marched fearlessly north along the Kingsroad, a seemingly unending column of mailed knights and their squires, archers dwarfed by their dragonbone bows, maesters and medics, sellswords hungry for gold and glory, and at the head of it all Lord Randyll himself, a resplendent figure in his crimson plate. The striding huntsman hung like a deadly premonition from the host's banners, and massive war drums at various intervals throughout the column beat thunder into the air. They'd been marching for almost a week straight, stopping mostly just to slaughter flagging horses for meat. They slept in overlapping shifts so that the march would never have to cease. Lord Randyll had wanted to answer his son's call with steel, and as quickly as possible.

A ragged cheer went up among the men in the front of the column as the top of the Wall slowly emerged from the horizon: a white line that grew and grew and grew until it seemed to fill the world. Seven hundred feet high it was, and three hundred miles long. The Wall was the most impressive structure ever raised by mortal man, but if it intimidated Lord Randyll, this did not show.

_Do DOO, do DOOOOOOO_, went the column's warhorn. "Falter not, heroes!" Randyll Tarly bellowed, lifting Heartsbane into the air and waving its three foot length as if it were no heavier than a stick. "My fat son thinks to defend Castle Black from the south! With none but his rapers, his thieves, his slackjaws and his fools! The shit that sank to the realm's very bottom! Ha! On this day we teach him the craft of war! _On this day_ _the Watch bleeds!"_

The column exploded in cheers, and the cheering continued until the host arrived at Castle Black and found it completely deserted except for the flapping battle standard. The stables were empty of horses and the kennels empty of dogs. There was nothing to fight.

"M'lord," said Fuckup, who was Randyll Tarly's household fool. He trotted his mule up to stand at Lord Randyll's side. "Where dafuq they at?" Fuckup had been brought along for comic relief and for the morale boost his inevitable death in battle would bring to the column of actual warriors. His huge, 3D-looking neck tattoo of a slice of pizza danced as he twisted his onion-shaped head from left to right and then left again, searching for the brothers of the Watch. "Where fatass at?" he muttered.

Lord Randyll wordlessly clouted Fuckup with the back of one mailed fist, knocking him from his mule. "Find them," he shouted. "Drag them from their holes and slaughter them! No quarter!" The knights of House Tarly reared their mounts and charged off to the east and the west like swarming ants spreading along the base of the Wall, past the ice cells and eventually into the far castles that served as checkpoints along the Wall's absurd length. But there was no one to drag from any hole, no one to slaughter. The Wall appeared to be utterly abandoned.

"He was prankin' you!" Fuckup shrieked, wiping blood from his nose on the sleeve of his tunic. By this time he had remounted his mule. "Fatass dunked on you, boy! He ain't even here!"

Lord Randyll scowled and again smashed Fuckup to the ground. He trotted forward into the courtyard of Castle Black with an ear turned to the ominous silence. There was the clopping of far-off hooves, captains shouting muffled orders to men far distant... and no movement at all that he could see. With mounting unease, Lord Randyll approached the battle standard to study its device.

"Undead eyes," he murmured to himself. It didn't seem to make sense. The Night's Watch was the realm's sworn defender _against _the undead. And yet…

"M'lord! M'lord!" A knight came trotting into the courtyard looking and sounding frantic. "M'lord, above you! Look out!"

Lord Randyll craned his neck, dragging his eyes further and further up the Wall. At once he understood. Of _course _the Wall couldn't be defended from the south. It couldn't even really be defended from the north. It was too large to be defensible from the ground.

The defenders were _atop _the Wall.

_"Welcome to my Wall, BITCH!" _came the thunderous baritone of Samwell Tarly's voice, diminished hardly at all by the incredible seven-hundred-foot distance.

The first man streaked from the sky like a falling star, screamless even as he landed in the yard as might a garbage bag full of watermelons. He didn't so much land as explode, spattering Lord Randyll and Fuckup with gore. Fuckup screamed.

A second and a third man fell as the first had, one crashing through the rafters of Castle Black and another landing on top of the armory with a sickening crunch. Lord Randyll's mount squealed in terror and tried to rear, but he yanked its head around with the reigns and kicked it forward, out of the courtyard to the safety of the road... but the dead men were rising again, blocking his path to the gates. The first guy who'd fallen was barely able to rise, so splattered had he been, but the other two sprung up from their impact zones with luminous sapphire eyes and vile grins on their ruined faces. A fourth sacrifice crashed directly in front of Lord Randyll, causing him to fall from his horse. He caught a scream before it could escape his throat and scrambled backward and away from the wight as it rose before him.

"So good of you to come," it said in a voice that was like ripping cloth. It had been Ser Alliser Thorne, once. Now it was a bloody horror with shattered legs and eyes of blue fire, and it knew nothing of pain or fear or exhaustion. Ser Alliser's ruined bones crackled and broke further as he stood up to tower over Lord Randyll.

In the end the bloodbath lasted perhaps only fifteen or twenty minutes, but time may as well have frozen solid for the men of Randyll Tarly's host. While many of the brothers of the Watch cannonballed down from atop the Wall to rise as the undead and rip through the enemy ranks with tooth and claw, the rest rained down an unending torrent of flaming arrows, rocks, barrels of frozen gravel, and unused odds and ends of plate armor. A few fools actually attempted to scale the Wall, but naturally it repelled them. They had not brought tools for climbing, and besides, it was seven hundred feet of pure hell to the top. The Watch lost not a single man (unless you counted the ones who had jumped off and become wights).

Lord Randyll never did leave the courtyard. The wight formerly known as Ser Alliser had smashed through his plate and snatched open his belly with a clawed hand, yanked out a few yards of his entrails, and then left him to die. Lord Commander Samwell found his father in this state around sunset, when the brothers finally descended the Wall to euthanize the remnants of the host and claim Lord Randyll's dead as wights. Naked Samwell crouched by his father's head and removed his sunglasses. Lord Randyll's breath rushed shallowly in and out.

"You should have let me dance and sing and read," Samwell said. "You could have saved yourself, my lord. If only you had known with whom the fuck you were dealing."

"You are not my son," Lord Randyll breathed.

"No," Samwell agreed. He unlimbered his elephant trunk and began to urinate into Lord Randyll's open guts. Tammy came to his side and clung to one of his huge, flabby arms. She looked down at the ruined man with tears in her glowing eyes.

Samwell flipped his dong around to shake off the drops. "No," he repeated, "no son of yours. No son of Tarly. House Tarly is finished. On this day I begin a new House. Witness me, bitch; witness the birth of _House Slayer_."

Night fell. Lord Randyll closed his eyes, and his spirit descended into whatever hells there are.


	17. 17: Catelyn

**CATELYN**

* * *

Being ghost divorced sucked.

It wasn't even the lack of sex, or the loneliness, or the knowledge that she'd broken Ned's dead heart so bad that he'd dumped her, his lady wife, the mother of his five trueborn children. The worst part was just how _weird_ it was to find herself as a newly-single, dead, bachelorette. She'd gotten so entombed in her life with Ned at Winterfell that she hadn't even noticed the world and culture in general were continuing their onward march while she remained stationary, pumping out babies and writing furious diary entries about her hatred for Jon Snow.

_Fucking Jon Snow_, she thought suddenly, and kicked an ethereal rock into the stream. _If I had my diary now I'd really let that little fucker have it._

The prospects for a ghost divorcee were dire, it seemed. Catelyn was still a fairly young ghost, and cute; but the men she had been meeting in the afterlife all seemed like children to her, like icky little boys with trendy haircuts and strange, casual views about romance. Even the ones who were older than her seemed like apathetic babies who only wanted their ghost roots sucked.

For a while Catelyn had turned inward and convinced herself there was no need to date in the afterlife. You couldn't reproduce anymore, after all. And there was no need for any sort of financial security or social safety net in the form of a husband since everything was free. No one slept; sleep was not a thing in the afterlife. After she was intimate with a ghost they would both simply lay there in bed, staring. Once she'd tried to cuddle, but her date had shrugged her off, claiming he had a headache. _Bullshit, _she had realized. _None of us can feel pain. _But she had just rolled over and stared at the wall for seven more hours until it was daylight again and it seemed acceptable for them both to depart for wherever it was ghosts were supposed to go during the day. Catelyn didn't really know where that was so she'd just gone back to the stream and ruminated on Jon Snow some more.

But that wouldn't get it, either. She was simply too bored to stay single. There had to be _someone _in this godforsaken heavenly plane with whom she could… do _something. _Paint pictures, play tennis, who the fuck knew? Maybe cook? Although food and eating weren't things, either.

Her days had slowly devolved into a very simple routine. She would wait by the stream until morning, when other ghosts would finally begin wandering the countryside. Then she'd catcall the cute ones. "Hey! Wanna fuck?" But many of the ghosts clearly wanted no part of Catelyn Stark, and they'd bound away like sheep or goats on the run from a pissed off German shepherd. If she managed to hook somebody, they'd usually just go for a weird little walk along the stream while Catelyn tried to make smalltalk, which she was terrible at.

"So, what's your… favorite… time of day…"

"Um…"

Et cetera.

She must've been dead for about a month when she finally met Sandor. He was tall, heavily-muscled, and had a roguish grin that always bared the teeth on the burned side of his face. Catelyn had found him as she found everyone, wandering past her stream. "Hey!" she'd cried. "You wanna fuck?"

Sandor had swiveled his head toward her, looked, dusted his hands off on his thighs, and jogged over.

"Yes, ma'am," he'd said.

After they were finished and staring in bed together, they got to talking about their lives. Sandor learned he had just shot ghost cum into the Lady of Winterfell, and Catelyn learned that Arya had tormented Sandor mercilessly before his death from an infected wound.

"She used to call me ugly and stupid," he admitted quietly. "And she used to beat me up."

"_Arya_?" Catelyn was in disbelief. "But she was only eight, or nine maybe. And like a sixth of your size."

"She was so _fast_ though!" Sandor cried, balling his fists and rubbing viciously at his eyes. "Trying to swat her down was like trying to keep a swarm of wasps from stinging. She was _everywhere_. Her and that fucking _Needle_."

When Catelyn learned that Jon Snow had armed her young daughter with steel, she became so furious that she vomited. Sandor held her hair for her and told her it would be okay. He explained that surely Jon Snow would someday die, too, and then they could kick his ass, just like he deserved. This was the magic message Catelyn realized she had been waiting for: someday Jon Snow would die and be flung into this realm with her and Sandor. Someday she'd be able to get her revenge.

Sandor showed Catelyn a huge bruise on the side of his neck. "She karate chopped me here," he said. Catelyn kissed the bruise. "And here," he said, indicating his dick. She kissed that too.

"I love you, Catey," Sandor said.

"I love you, too, Sandy."

"Will you ghost marry me?"

"Oh, Sandy!" She wiped a last smudge of vomit from the side of her lip and kissed him full on the mouth. "You fuckin' know I will."

"Who will we invite to our ghost wedding?" Sandor asked. He was giddy. He'd never been married before. Or had sex. Today was full of firsts for him.

"Eddard Stark," Catelyn said.


	18. 18: Cersei

**CERSEI**

* * *

"Right this way, Your Grace," said Roose Bolton as he led Queen Cersei down the narrow steps to the Dreadfort's dungeon. "Watch your step. Ramsay has been working on a new form of torture involving these steps. So far he hasn't made very much progress. All he's come up with is pushing people down them. A terribly unimaginative boy, I'm afraid."

"He'd better do a good job," Cersei warned. "Or he'll wish he had."

Lord Roose made no reply to this as they walked the darkened corridor. He relit one of the oil lamps that had gone out. They walked until someone banged on the door of a cell they were passing.

"Hey, dick butt!" screamed Theon Greyjoy from behind the thick oaken door. "What's the wifi password in this fucking dump?"

"Be quiet, you swine," Lord Roose said, and thumped the outside of the door with his own fist. "Stop yelling in there. You're driving the other prisoners absolutely nuts. They're all sick of you."

"Hey man, you got any beer out there?" Theon asked. He threw himself bodily against the door, producing a stiff wooden creek. "I'm thirsty as hell. For alcohol, I mean."

"Young Greyjoy," Roose told Cersei, rolling his pale eyes, "is quite our problem child."

"You should simply kill him," Cersei said, although she seemed uncertain.

"I'd like to, but Ramsay would miss him."

"You should kill Ramsay as well."

"But then, Your Grace," Roose said, with the faintest hint of a smile, "who would perform your flaying?"

At last they reached the flaying chamber. The floor was dark with old blood and it smelled like piss and shit. Ramsay was inside, carefully tying his butcher's apron. When he saw Queen Cersei, he let out an excited grunt and scuttled over to her like a hermit crab. "If I do a good job, will you legitimize me? Your Grace?"

"She most certainly will not," Roose told him, and kicked the flaying knife from his stubby hand. "Go pick that up, you bastard."

Ramsay did as he was told. He was one of the ugliest boys Cersei had ever seen, and she'd slept with Lancel Lannister, whose mustache was known throughout the Seven Kingdoms for being extra wispy and unattractive. Ramsay had long, lank brown hair. He was chubby and short, with beady, close-set eyes and a big mouth. He looked like the sort of man who masturbates roughly eight times a day and hates women because of it.

"So," she said, trying to make small talk as Ramsay attached her limbs to the X frame. "How long have you been flaying?"

"Oh, a long time!" Ramsay cried proudly. "I started out practicing on myself. Look!" He shucked his pants down and turned around so Cersei could witness his buttocks, one of which bore a large, rectangular scar where the skin had been peeled away.

"Put your pants back on," Roose said, disgusted.

"Yes, Daddy."

Roose Bolton exited the torture chamber and slammed the door. He was clearly displeased with this scenario.

"Where do you want to start?"

"Hmm. Why not the legs?" Cersei said. As Ramsay cut a circle around the top of one thigh, she closed her eyes and smiled.

When the queen returned from the Dreadfort, she was quite a sight to behold. She was now shiny and red from head to toe, had no hair or eyelids or lips, no genitals, and no nose. Her smile was ghastly. Her golden dress was plastered to her flesh and made a muddy purple by the blood. In fact she reeked of blood, blood and decay, but insisted upon holding court regardless.

"Mother, go take a bath!" King Joffrey yelled, pointing off to the left, where the royal baths were. "You look gross!"

"Shut up, Your Grace," Cersei snapped. "I feel wonderful. I'm finally sane."

"You're getting blood all over the place!"

Grand Maester Pycelle grunted his assent. The old medicine man had never seen a thing quite like post-flaying Cersei.

"So?" Cersei smiled. "I _like _getting blood all over the place. Now you two idiots know how I felt when you showed up in your stupid loin cloths."

"These loin cloths were sewn by the greatest tailors in the realm!" Vice King Tyrion screamed. He was particularly sensitive about the quality of the loin cloths because in fact he had made them himself, out of towels.

"Well, they look awful," Cersei told him. She sat on the Iron Throne, drawing disgusted gasps from the court.

"Mother, not the Throne!" Joffrey cried. "That'll take hours to clean! Your blood is going to get down into all the swords!"

"Too bad," Cersei said. She shifted, threw one red leg up over the armrest, and reclined lavishly. "I guess you'll either have to clean it or just let it be my official chair from now on."

"I'm not cleaning that shit up," muttered Vice King Tyrion.

"Get off, Mother!" Joffrey grabbed her slimy hand and tried to pull her down from the Throne, but being flayed had given Cersei new powers of determination. She pulled her hand out of Joffrey's and gave him two playful slaps on the face and neck, smearing him with blood.

"Ewww!" he screamed.

"Go to your room or something," Cersei said. "I'm tired. Court is adjourned. Someone bring me two bottles of wine." She smiled. "And one of those mushrooms."

"That's unwise, Mother," Joffrey cautioned. "You're gonna start thinking about all kinds of weird stuff. You'll regret being flayed, I guarantee it. You'll probably cry like I did."

"I never cry," Cersei said. "Crying is for babies, Your Grace."

"Get this bitch some mushrooms," Vice King Tyrion bellowed. Grand Maester Pycelle heaved a weary sigh and started shuffling off to where he kept the royal stash.


	19. 19: Reek

**REEK **

* * *

Reek, also known as the Nerd Formerly Known as Theon, was boreder than shit. Time in the dungeon didn't really exist; it was always dark, damp, and smelly, and there was no way to see the world outside, so he spent most of his days masturbating. Reek had built elaborate systems of deceit for getting the guards to bring tissue paper and lotion into the dungeon, and he'd even drawn his own pornography, in the dirt, using his fingertip.

Ramsay used to play with him frequently, but no longer. It had been days… maybe _weeks_ since anyone had come to drag him to the torture chamber. There was nothing to do. He couldn't even see the porn he'd drawn, so he still had to use his imagination anyway. His hair was getting long and his dick was getting chafed. The Dreadfort was bullshit.

"Ring ring ring ring ring," Reek called, rattling the door to his cell and beginning to slap and kick it. "Ring ring ring, lemme out, I'm bored, lemme go home, lemme—"

"Reek?"

Reek froze. He put his ear to the door and listened. He could feel his heart thumping high up in his collarbones. "Ramsay?" he said.

The door unlocked and opened cautiously. Ugly Ramsay Snow shuffled in with his head down.

"Where have you been," Reek demanded, slamming his fist into his palm. "You've neglected me. I need stimulation. My brain isn't even fully formed yet! It doesn't finish until you're twenty-five. You _need to get back to flaying me._"

Ramsay winced. He went to the corner of Reek's cell and sat on the low wooden stool that was the only furniture. The stool cracked and spilled Ramsay's lumpy body to the floor. He made no move to rise.

"I'm sorry," he admitted.

"Sorry for what?"

"I've lost interest in flaying."

Reek screamed, "What?"

"They made me flay Queen Cersei the other day," he said, still lying on his back on the floor. He sighed. "It was so nasty."

"But you love flaying," Reek insisted. "Remember when you did my little finger and I wouldn't quit saying, 'Ramsay loves the cock, Ramsay loves the cock,' until you beat me unconscious?" Reek moved close to his old friend and took his hand. "That was _our _time."

"I know," Ramsay said, and choked back a sob. "But you weren't there, man. They made me do her _whole body_. Like, the boobs and everything. It just really grossed me out. How am I supposed to ever look at a naked woman the same way again?"

"There, there," Reek said.

"Don't patronize me!" Ramsay shouted, rising to his feet and pulling furiously on his long, brittle hair.

"My lord," Reek said, taking Ramsay's hands gently in his own to stop him from pulling. "You are the heir to the Dreadfort. You _must _flay. I mean, it's… it's the _law._"

"I'm not the heir. My lord father won't legitimize me. As soon as he gets old and sick and needs a new kidney, he'll chop out mine and send me on my way."

"That isn't true, my lord. Lord Roose thinks very… uh… highly of you."

"He doesn't!" screamed Ramsay. He kicked the waste bucket across the cell, splattering the wall with several gallons of Reek's feces. Then he turned to Reek. There were tears shining on his cheeks.

"You're free, dude. I'm heading out and I'm going to leave the door open. You can go wherever you like. And you know what?" He laughed. "If you want to stay here, that's all right too." He leaned close and cupped a hand around Reek's ear so he could whisper.

"The wifi password is _grandviolet415."_

Reek gasped. "Is… is it _really_—"

"All one word," Ramsay said, "no capital letters. Spelled just like it sounds. grandviolet415."

"My lord, you bless me with your kindness!"

He kissed Reek on the mouth. "Be well, old friend," he said. And with that, Ramsay Snow exited Reek's cell, climbed the narrow steps, and went out into the world.


	20. 20: Jon

**JON**

* * *

Once he had been Jon Snow, but now he was Jon the Slayer. Grenn was also The Slayer. So was Pyp, and Maester Aemon. In fact everyone on the Wall was The Slayer. It was the new title bestowed by Lord Commander Samwell on all the denizens of House Slayer, the phoenix which had risen from the bloody ashes of the Night's Watch. The only ones who had not gotten the title were the ones who'd leapt from the Wall and become undead.

"Come on," the wight formerly known as Alliser Thorne had urged in its new, rasping voice. "I'm a big time slayer. I even slew your goddamn father, my lord. I gave up a _lot _for House Slayer."

"You did soften him up, but it was my pee that finished him off. And besides, it's a title for a man," Samwell said, dismissing the wight with a flick of his meaty hand. "Not a wight. If you wish, you can be Alliser the Cray Cray."

"No! What the hell is that? 'The Cray Cray'?"

"How about Alliser the… Spooky?"

The wight formerly known as Alliser Thorne groaned.

Jon put in, "Alliser the Wight?"

"That," Alliser complained, "would be like calling you Jon the Human."

"He's got a point," said Maester Aemon the Slayer. "Or like calling me 'Aemon the Old.' It's like, no shit he's old. I think Alliser should get the title."

"Hell yes!" the wight formerly known as Alliser Thorne cried. "The blind man sees the light!"

"Hell no," Lord Commander Samwell said, blank-faced. "Wights don't get the title. I'm sorry, man. That's just the way it works."

"This is goddamn racism," Alliser said loudly.

"Fuckup the Slayer, take this wight to the ice cells and lock him in," Samwell shouted.

Fuckup took the wight gently by the elbow and led him away. Fuckup had been promoted to The Slayer when Jon and Sam had found him cowering in the stables of Castle Black two days after the battle. Samwell had decided Fuckup had been treated by Randyll Tarly almost as badly as he, Samwell, had been, and that they were thusly not foes at all but blood brothers for life.

"Jon. Walk with me."

"Yes, my lord." Jon hurried after the naked Lord Commander. Samwell refused to wear any clothes at all anymore—not counting the sunglasses, of course. They walked together through the Great Hall of Castle Black and out into the courtyard, where the music of ringing swords and the grunts of new recruits filled the air. Sam gave wise nods to several of the black brothers of House Slayer as they passed. They soon reached the gates, and crossed to the winches that were used to raise buckets of gravel or potatoes or huge Lords Commander to the top of the Wall. Samwell spent about fifteen minutes wedging himself into the cage, cursing and sweating furiously the whole time. Eventually Jon had to help him tuck his gigantic penis inside so the door could close. Jon gave two quick yanks on the rope and then began sprinting up the rickety staircase.

"Race you to to the top, dude!" he cried over his shoulder. Samwell roared in fury as the cage creaked upward one inch, two, three. Jon was already on the third row of stairs.

And he won handily. He waited atop the Wall for almost an hour while nine or ten hulking behemoths who'd been builders in the olden days of the Night's Watch labored desperately to drag the Lord Commander up. When Samwell finally arrived and was pried from the cage, he was in a somber mood.

"Look out there, Jon," he said, sweeping the Haunted Forest with the thick, wobbling tube of his arm. "What do you see?"

"Just a bunch of trees and shit, my lord."

"Wrong, man. What you see is our kingdom. On this day I claim the lands north of the Wall for House Slayer."

Jon looked out over the world. It was still early, and the sky had a delicate pink cast that would be gone by midmorning. The wildling mountains stabbed up from the horizon like ragged shark teeth.

"Nice," Jon remarked. He wasn't quite sure what to say.

Samwell turned and looked at his old pal. "I'm sending you on a ranging mission."

Jon's heart leapt. Ranging! He'd always wanted to be a ranger! Of course, he already _had _been one, and had had to murder the Halfhand, and turn his cloak, and be called a traitor by both the Watch and the wildlings, and be locked in an ice cell, and be threatened with beheading by that candy corn bitch Janos Slynt. But he was still eager to get back in the saddle. Ranging was in his blood, the blood of Stark; his uncle Benjen was still out there somewhere, doing his own ranging. _Well_, Jon hoped, _probably_. "What should I do on my mission, Lord Commander?"

"You will seek a mystical artifact," Samwell told him, in a deadly serious voice. "A weapon from the Age of Heroes. It's said that Mance Rayder seeks it as well… your old friend." He chuckled.

"Listen, man, I'm being serious. Me and Mance are _not_ friends. Sure, we drank a few ales together, and had a couple of inside jokes, and I mean, we definitely had similar taste in women and music. And it's true that we stayed up all night together giggling at swear words in our tents a few times when we both couldn't sleep because we were so excited. And he did loan me money on multiple occasions, and he's also the godfather of any children I might—"

"_You seek the Bong of Joramun_."

Jon's blood was of the Starks and the North, but that didn't stop it from running cold in his veins.

"The… the Bong…"

Samwell nodded. He surveyed the Haunted Forest again. "You leave in three days, at first light. You may gather whichever brothers you wish to accompany you. Find it, Jon. _Bring me the Bong of Joramun and write your name large across history._"

Forged thousands of years ago in dragonfire and infused with magical runes and properties, the Bong of Joramun, also known as the Water Pipe of Winter and Joramun's Hookah, was among the most powerful artifacts said to still exist somewhere in Westeros. Ancient King Joramun was believed to have hit it a single time and raised such a cloud of smoke that it woke the giants from the earth. The Bong of Joramun was rumored to get you so high you wouldn't even be able to speak; you'd try, but you'd sound like a racoon. Your friends would have to pull you around in a wagon and probably feed and water you so you wouldn't simply forget and die, as was common among the Bong's users. No one knew its current location. It was somewhere beyond the Wall, for certain, but after that none could say.

"I will not let you down, my lord," said Jon the Slayer.

Samwell smiled at him. "Complete this quest, young Slayer, and you and I shall have the most lit weekend of our fucking lives."

Somewhere a wolf howled. Suddenly, Jon had a strange idea. "You don't think… Uncle _Benjen_…"

Sam nodded. The smile was gone. "That's exactly what I think. I think Benjen found it. I think he hit it. And I think he's still out there somewhere, immobilized by relaxation."

_My god,_ Jon realized. _I will find the Bong, and Benjen Stark, too. And I shall bring them both home to House Slayer. This is my purpose. The hardships, my bastardry, everything—it has all led to this. My great work._

"My lord," he said to Samwell, smiling a smile of his own. "It shall be done."

Samwell nodded, businesslike once again. "Help me back into the cage," he said. "I'll go in face first this time so my dick won't make it hard to close the door."

"Great is your wisdom, my lord."

"Amen," said Samwell.


End file.
